| US Court Order Could Boost Spam By 50 Billion Daily
A U.S. District Court judge ordered anti-spam organization Spamhaus to pay $11.7 million in damages to an e-mail marketing company. The U.K.-based Spamhaus said the U.S. court had no jurisdiction and ignored it. Now anti-spam advocates worry that the judge might order ICANN to eliminate the Spamhaus domain.
By Gregg Keizer
TechWeb News
Oct 11, 2006 02:17 PM A September decision by a federal court may mean more spam hitting inboxes, an analyst said Wednesday. Last month, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled in favor of e-mail marketing company e360insight, and ordered U.K.-based Spamhaus, a non-profit anti-spam organization, to pay $11.7 million in damages. e360insight had argued that the Spamhaus blacklist -- a database of spammers and suspected spammers that is widely used by spam filtering services and software -- erroneously included its domain.
Bot nets likely behind jump in spam
A significant rise in the global volume of spam in the past two months has security analysts worried that bot nets are increasingly being used by spammers to stymie network defenses erected to curtail bulk email. Estimates of the magnitude of the increase in junk email vary, but experts agree that an uncommon surge in spam is occurring. On the low side, Symantec, the owner of SecurityFocus, has found that average spam volume has increased almost 30 percent for its 35,000 clients in the last two months. Others have seen much more significant jumps: Spam black list maintainer Total Quality Management Cubed has seen a 450 percent increase in spam in two months, and the amount of spam filtered out every week by security software maker Sunbelt Software has more than tripled compared to six months ago.
Why Your E-mail Still Lands In the Junk Folder
No, I'm not urging you to go over to the Dark Side. But one reason spammers get messages into the inbox while yours languish in the junk folder is because they're truly dedicated to the task of getting through ISP filters. Meanwhile, you're probably still using the same old tactics over and over. Spammers constantly tweak message templates, experiment with new tactics, and track their IP addresses to uncover and evade ISP blocks. In response, ISPs also update their filter criteria and definitions, and monitor blacklists in order to identify and trap more spam. Consequently, a benign e-mail message element that would have passed through the filters one day may be identified as a spam signature the next. Or, the number of spam complaints hitting the ISP's threshold triggers a block.
Anti-Spam Group Could Lose Site
Spamhaus, which maintains a blacklist of spammers, could lose its domain name in a dispute with a company it has accused of spamming.
October 10, 2006 Spamhaus, a UK-based group that maintains a blacklist of spammers is in danger of losing its domain name after a motion filed in the federal court in Illinois threatens to yank it off the web. The move comes after Spamhaus lost a case filed by e360 Insight, a bulk email outfit based in Chicago for putting it on the list that Spamhaus maintains. e-360 Insight filed the case against Spamhaus last month and won $11 million in damages after an Illinois court awarded a judgment in its favor. Spamhaus has said that the case was won because as a British organization it did not choose to fight a U.S.
Anti-spam site to remain online
Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has given UK-based anti-spam organisation Spamhaus hope in its battle against closure. Icann, the organisation that essentially controls the running of the internet, says it does not have 'the ability or authority' to shut down Spamhaus. The existence of www.spamhaus.org was under threat after it lost a legal battle in the US with e360 Insight, an email marketing company. Back in June, e360 Insight filed a lawsuit after it had been put on a blacklist of known spammers created by Spamhaus. The court found in e360 Insight's favour and in September the company filed another motion claiming that Spamhaus had failed to comply to the previous ruling and requesting that the court suspend www.spamhaus.org. In a further hearing, e360 Insight proposed to the court that Icann should suspend Spamhaus' domain.
Man in court over bomb hoax email
It is alleged Mr Barlow used an email account on Wednesday to send a threat to blow up aircraft to various aviation authorities and airports. Australian Federal Police tracked him down within hours of the threat being received. He was arrested and charged at his South Brisbane home early last night. If convicted, he faces a maximum 10 years jail. Mr Barlow was remanded in police custody until his next court appearance on December 1. .
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